Dining Out 048: Eat Vietnam Bar-B-Grill
Dinner in Deptford.
Okay so in the interests of transparency, given my current circumstances (all earthly possessions currently in a storage unit the size of two phone boxes hahahah), I have been a bit preoccupied. As such, I have to inform you that I actually did not really eat out anywhere over the last seven days, but for an ill-advised takeaway when packing up my stuff, and a victorious ham and cheese croissant scoffed in about three seconds flat as soon as I’d unloaded everything I own into its temporary home (so far I am only really missing my air fryer).
As luck would have it, however, I actually went to two places the week before: one was The Library at The Hero in Maida Vale, which I told you about last Thursday, and the other was Eat Vietnam Bar-B-Grill in Deptford. And while I usually do try to keep things going around here on a rolling weekly basis, to be honest, even in spite of my ridiculous life, Eat Vietnam is so class that it would be a shame not to write about it, so I will think back a little bit further than normal, and give you the details.
I’d imagine that if you’re in south London and you’re reading a newsletter about restaurants, you might well be familiar with Eat Vietnam, near The Dog and Bell – it is a place so popular, after all, that it has an overspill restaurant for walk-ins only a couple of doors down. There is a big menu of Vietnamese standards, like bún and pho and bánh mì, alongside a grill menu, mainly made up of meats – and it’s the addition of meats cooked on this grill to those more classic dishes, as well as a slight lean towards traditional barbecue flavours (definitely deep-fried sweet potato fries as a side; a ridiculously moreish, whiskey-heavy sauce on items like wings and grilled ribs) that makes Eat Vietnam special.
We visited on a weekend evening, and our table was an early one – about 5:45PM or so – but the room was still pretty busy, mostly with couples and families. In terms of layout and ambience, Eat Vietnam kind of reminds me of a Nando’s: bright lighting, a wide range of punters, lots of locals, bright colours painted on the wall, Magic FM or thereabouts playing over the speakers – all that nice stuff that shows you how loved and rated and homely a restaurant is.
Food-wise, because I have a chronic disease whereby I must have a little taste of everything, we actually decided to share a bunch of stuff between two of us, rather than opting for individual mains*, so the line-up was thus: fried chunks of silken tofu, cánh gà (WINGS in Bar-B-Grill sauce: mother may I), bánh khọt (mini pancakes ft. prawn), a Saigon Classic bánh mì, a portion of sweet potato fries, and two bottles of Saigon Red.
This, I have to say, was up there with the greatest ordering I have ever done in my life, and if you are going to Eat Vietnam for the first time in a party of two hungry hungry hippos, I think this could be a good selection to follow, not to toot my own horn. It was a perfect amount of food, and a good spread of flavours and textures.
The fry on the tofu was crisp, giving way to softness and moisture inside, and the wings – my personal favourite bit – were genuinely among the best I have ever eaten. First of all, they were so huge that each wing was basically more like two (positive). The coating on each was light and it remained crunchy until my last bite, even under the sauce – which, as I say, was boozy and deep and a little bit five-spice-y – and the meat came cleanly away from the bone.
The bánh mì was almost ostentatiously meaty – made with sausage, spiced pork belly, liver paté made in-house, “egg yolk butter” (cmonnnn) and fermented garlic chilli: it’s Henry VIII shit let’s be real now – and was dominated by the rich undertone of that liver, though the flavours were so layered and complex I had to keep going back and taking new bites to understand exactly what the fuck was going on (again, positive). The bánh khọt were another massive, surprising highlight: basically tiny coconut pancakes, each filled with a single prawn. They were served with big sprigs of coriander and mint, pickles and salad, plus a vinegar-led dipping sauce, all of which lifted up the creamy coconut filling of the pancakes loads.
All told and altogether, it was easily one of the most satisfying meals I’ve eaten in an extremely long time. Usually when I’m writing about restaurants in this format, I kind of just remember the dinner or lunch or whatever fondly and try to recall it in as faithful and entertaining a manner as I can, but honestly, I’m thinking back on Eat Vietnam now and my overwhelming feeling is that I am just absolutely fucking dying to eat everything I had all over again. I reckon this is probably pretty solid evidence that it kind of surpasses the territory of “good” and shoulders its way into “easy immediate favourite”. Basically, my tip is this: if you’re going for a pint at The Dog and Bell any time soon, make this place – and getting your chops around those wings – a very very important priority.
* Though if you are in the market for your own personal substantial meal, I would strongly, strongly recommend the deal where you get meat or seafood from the grill section, paired with rice or sweet potato fries (get the sweet potato fries) plus salad and house pickles for between £15 and £17.50. Huge portions, bang up value.
Dining Out is written by Lauren O’Neill and illustrated by Lucy Letherland. Weekly reviews are free to read every Thursday, and you can follow us on Instagram here, but if you’d like to see more, you can subscribe for £5 a month or £50 a year, to get extra content every second Sunday.
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